Love Ever After
by Dani-Ellie03
Summary: Emma's eyes traveled to the locked cabinet where she kept her bankers box. Where she kept her childhood. Maybe … maybe it was time to let her parents in. Maybe it was time to let them see what little of her childhood she'd managed to save.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** Here, have some Charming Family angst  & hurt/comfort, because the feels hit me hard. (Honestly, I have no idea where this came from other than a random feels attack.) This was supposed to be a oneshot but as I wrote, it became too big to be a oneshot so it's now a two-shot. ;) Killian and Henry both make appearances in the second part. Title taken from Daughtry's "Life After You." Feedback makes my little day! Enjoy. :)

* * *

It had already been one of those days.

Emma Swan's morning had started with her awakening less than five minutes before she was supposed to be at the station. She'd called her dad to let him know that she was running late and, for reasons unclear to Emma, he must have called Snow, who in turn called her ten minutes after she plopped down at her desk to give her quite the teasing. (Which was funny, don't get her wrong, but there were only so many times she could listen to her _mom_ joke about certain late-night activities with a certain pirate before her cheeks turned bright red.) An hour after that, she'd knocked over her cocoa, spilling it all over the paperwork she'd been filling out.

When she'd had to clear a jam in the printer three separate times, David had finally taken pity on her and offered to buy her lunch. Since she'd needed a break, Emma offered to go to Granny's to pick it up. In keeping with the spirit of the day, however, there was a line literally out the door when Emma arrived. In what ended up being the first thing to go right all day, she called the takeout order in while she was in line and was able to pick it up when she got inside.

Now she was standing in front of the door of the station, still vaguely annoyed and somewhat perplexed. A tray of drinks occupied one hand and the bags of food were in the other. If only she had a third hand so she could actually open the damn door.

Heaving a sigh, she shifted the bags to the crook of the arm holding the drink tray and said a silent prayer that she wouldn't drop anything. In the miracle of the ages, she managed to get into the building without spilling a single thing but man oh man did Storybrooke have a cranky sheriff on its hands.

She was so annoyed that she didn't even register the fact that her mom's station wagon was parked in one of the visitors' spots. It was a surprise to her, then, when just as she was about to round the corner into the bullpen, she heard her mom say, "Didn't they come out great?"

Despite the rumbling in Emma's stomach telling her to eat that delicious-smelling food in her hands _now_ , please and thank you, she halted in her tracks. Didn't what come out great?

Oh. Oh _shit_. Now she remembered exactly what her mom was talking about.

A couple days ago, David had arranged to come into work late because he and Snow had made an appointment to get professional pictures of Neal done now that he was six months old. Snow must have picked the prints up this morning.

A sudden pang of sadness in Emma's chest made her breath catch in her throat.

She didn't begrudge her parents any of this time or any of these baby activities with Neal. She honestly didn't. Of course they should have the opportunity to do all the little parental things with their baby and of course Neal should get to do all the little baby things with his parents. But sometimes it royally sucked watching her baby brother get all the family opportunities she never did.

The opportunities that were stolen from her.

She didn't feel jealous, exactly. More like wistful. All those little things parents did with their children, all those little bonding activities … those chapters were over for her. Those chapters were over for her parents with her. So yeah, it was hard sometimes to watch Neal get the chance to do all the things she never would. It was hard to watch her parents reveling in the chance to get to do all the things with Neal that they didn't get to do with her.

And now here she was, standing stock-still in the corridor of the station, not meaning to eavesdrop on her parents' conversation but doing so anyway. "They came out wonderful," David agreed, his tone tender. Despite the pain Emma was feeling at the entire situation, she smiled at the pure love in her father's voice. He was such a good dad. "I think this is the one we should hang on the wall."

"I think so, too." Her mom let out a soft sigh. "I just wish we had pictures like this of Emma. We have two babies, Charming. It's not fair that we can only put up baby pictures of one of them. We … we don't even know what she looked like at this age."

Emma felt tears pricking the backs of her eyes. It _wasn't_ fair, was it? It wasn't fair at all.

"I wish we had pictures of her, too," David said softly. "She's our baby, too, Snow. We should have known her."

They should have. They should have known her and she should have known them. She should have grown up with them, with her loving parents who wanted nothing more than to take care of her and love her and make sure she grew up happy and healthy. They should have gotten to raise their little girl. They should have had each other but they didn't.

They _didn't_. And it _sucked_.

The tears in her eyes were on the verge of escaping. Emma took a deep breath and blinked them back before they could fall. Then she retreated a few steps and made more noise than necessary in the hallway to warn her unsuspecting parents that she was coming.

By the time she rounded the corner, both Snow and David had managed to swallow their outward emotion, too. They smiled warmly at her in greeting, which she returned. Little Neal was nestled in the stroller beside Snow, indulging in an early afternoon nap.

Emma tried to keep the emotion out of her voice as she plunked the food and drinks down on her father's desk right on top of the paperwork he'd abandoned when Snow arrived. "Granny's was a zoo. Next time, I call Not It on getting the food."

Both of her parents chuckled, which was her intention. Still, their previous conversation weighed heavily in the air because the smile David gave her lacked the usual teasing sparkle. Instead, it was tinted with a little bit of pensive sadness. "Of course, darling daughter."

"And hello to you, too, Emma," Snow laughed. Even her teasing lilt was tinged with just a hint of sadness, though Emma probably wouldn't have picked up on it if she hadn't been eavesdropping.

"Hi, Mom." She nodded toward the photos in Snow's hand. "I take it the squirt's pictures came in?"

Snow smiled as she handed them over to her daughter. "They did indeed."

Emma slowly examined the portraits. One of the poses was the requisite baby propped up on a white-fluffy-covered baby seat picture. In the second, the squirt was looking up at the camera while doing tummy time on what looked like a picnic blanket. But Emma's favorite was the third shot, in which little Neal was sitting up, happily hugging a teddy bear, and giving the photographer a wide, gummy smile.

That had to be the one David had said they should hang on the wall.

"They're adorable," she said softly.

She meant it. They _were_ adorable. Her baby brother was the cutest baby brother in all the realms. But there was still that pang of sadness and injustice underneath it all.

Emma handed the pictures back to her mother. Snow returned her baby girl's smile, tucked the pictures back in their protective envelope, and stole a peek at her napping baby boy. "All right," she said through a quiet sigh, "I have to get this little guy home. We'll let you two get to your lunch."

David and Emma bid them goodbye with hugs (for Snow) and gentle forehead kisses (for Neal). Proving the accuracy of his nickname, David then offered to walk Snow and little Neal to the door.

Warring emotions filled Emma as she watched them go. She was happy that her family was happy. She was happy that she had a family at all. But all the things that she'd missed, all the moments and milestones she could never reclaim filled her heart with a heavy, almost physical ache.

Learning that her parents were taking Neal for a special little portrait session had been hard enough. It was another thing entirely to actually see the fruits of that session.

Emma heaved a sigh as she grabbed her food and drink and took them to her office. She'd just opened the Styrofoam takeout box to reveal her grilled cheese sandwich and onion rings when David rapped his knuckles on the doorjamb. "Are you all right?" he asked when she looked up.

"Yeah." She shrugged. "Why wouldn't I be?"

They both knew why she wouldn't be but thankfully David didn't press her on it. He simply gave her a nod and returned to his desk.

The minutes ticked by. Emma picked at her food as her brain made its way down the mental rabbit hole she'd been hoping to avoid.

The only pictures she had of herself as a baby were the grainy photos printed in the newspaper articles about her first few weeks of life. Once she was remanded to the foster system, she was no longer a news story and so the articles stopped. She was pretty sure the Swans had taken pictures of her during her baby- and toddlerhood. A sneaked peek at her file when she was about eight had revealed a few of pictures of a smiling baby, including one of her face covered in tomato sauce from the first time she'd tried to feed herself spaghetti. None of those pictures had ever made their way to her, though. They were probably languishing somewhere in some state's child services file archive.

The earliest picture she had on actual photographic paper was a candid of her little six-year-old self with an eight-year-old boy named Matthew. They'd posed with their arms around each other's shoulders and they were grinning at the camera. She remembered being happy in that foster home, mostly due to Matthew. The director of the group home was nice, too, but Matthew had made that place special. The two-year gap in their ages hadn't mattered to him at all and they'd quickly become best friends.

Then Matthew had gotten placed and everything had fallen apart.

The next picture in Emma's collection was taken two or three foster homes later, and the instability, along with the loss of Matthew, had already started taking their toll. There was no grinning smile in this one, just a little girl with sadness in her eyes. A little girl who'd already begun to lose hope. She kept that one in the file she'd made of her research into her own history.

A few of her school pictures had managed to make their way to her. They were taken every year, of course, but not every foster family had purchased the packages.

Her favorites were the the few candids she'd managed to save, though. Sometimes the kids were given a couple of rolls of film to waste or disposable cameras to play with so they all took nonsense pictures of each other. One of her favorites was of her at nine years old, sitting backwards at an indoor picnic table next to a twelve-year-old named Christine. They were smiling at the camera and, unbeknownst to each other at the time, giving each other bunny ears.

So she did have some pictures of her early years but barely enough for a cheap drugstore photo album. Not a lot to show for the twenty-eight years prior to her arrival in Storybrooke. The way she moved around growing up and living on the streets as a teenager, though, she was lucky she was able to save what little she did.

Emma had traveled so far down her little rabbit hole that she didn't notice David had once again stepped up to her office door. His clearing of his throat startled her back to the present. She jumped and blinked up at him. "Sorry, were you calling me?"

He smiled gently at her. "I just wanted to remind you that it's perfectly all right if you're not all right. Things like getting Neal's pictures done are hard for us because it makes us more keenly aware of what we missed with you. I can only imagine how hard those things must be for you."

The telltale tickle in the back of Emma's throat told her that, if left unchecked, tears were imminent. "I'm fine," she insisted, even though it was plain as day that she wasn't.

Again, he didn't argue with her. He simply nodded with another smile, leaving the proverbial door open for conversation should she change her mind, and retreated to his desk in the bullpen.

A heavy sigh escaped Emma's lips. Stewing over everything hadn't helped in the slightest. Now she was upset and to top it all off, her onion rings had gone cold.

She could fix the onion rings, at least. With a wave of her hand, she reheated the food with her magic.

Unfortunately, the pain and hurt in her family wouldn't be so easy to fix. A glance out the office door at her dad proved that he was indeed upset. He was starting despondently down at his own food and his mind appeared to be miles elsewhere.

Emma's heart clenched yet again. God, this was so damn unfair. She should have had loving, caring parents and her loving, caring parents should have known their little girl.

Her eyes traveled to the locked cabinet where she kept her bankers box. Where she kept her childhood.

Maybe … maybe it was time to let her parents in. Maybe it was time to let them see what little of her childhood she'd managed to save.

Maybe it was time to let them know the little girl they so desperately wanted to know. Because maybe the little girl wanted them to know her, too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** You guys are amazing! Thank you for your lovely reviews and the follows and favorites! I hope you all like this last part!

* * *

All afternoon, Emma hemmed and hawed over her decision. Should she really reveal the contents of her bankers box to her parents?

The lost little girl inside of her, the one who'd spent her life wishing for parents, wanted to show Snow and David everything. She wanted them to see the school papers and the art projects and the pictures she'd managed to keep. She wanted them to see her in the remnants of the past, to get to know her from the things she left behind.

But that lost little girl had grown into a hurt adult and Emma was extremely hesitant to pick at those wounds. Her childhood had been _hard_ and _painful_ and some of those feelings were still … raw.

Not to mention all the emotions her parents were sure to feel. Was it cruel to show them glimpses of the little girl they never had the chance to know? Or was it crueler to keep that little girl from them?

Emma must have talked herself out of her decision about a hundred times over the course of the afternoon. All it took to talk herself back into it again was remembering the expression of wonder on her mother's face when she watched that video of Emma and Ingrid.

Snow had been upset, of course, not only at the situation in front of them but also at the fact that those five seconds of video were the only moments she would ever have of her teenage daughter. On the other hand, she'd also treasured those five seconds of video _because_ they were the only moments she would ever have of her teenage daughter.

Talk about a double-edged sword.

Going through all these relics of a past they should have shared was going to be painful for all three of them but maybe sharing the past now would help those wounds start to heal.

"Are you sure you want to do this, love?" Killian asked, his voice startling her back to the present as she hesitantly tucked the box in the back seat of the Bug.

A soft sigh escaped Emma's lips as she pushed the driver's seat upright. "Not really but I think we all need it."

He answered not with words but by smiling and drawing her into a comforting embrace. Emma melted into the hug, closing her eyes and burying her nose in the little spot where his neck met his shoulder.

Killian let his touch comfort her for a beat, then whispered, "I'll be right there if you need me. Henry and I both."

"Thank you," she whispered back.

They let the moment linger another beat or two before climbing into the Bug. After taking a deep breath, Emma piloted the car towards her parents' loft.

(Emma hadn't been sure how to broach the subject of coming over to show them the contents of the bankers box. Snow ended up inviting them over for dinner, thereby inadvertently taking the heat off of Emma entirely.)

They made the drive to the apartment in semi-comfortable silence. The closer they got to the loft, though, the more nervous Emma became. Her heart was thudding in her chest by the time she pulled into her old parking space.

She cut the ignition, turned in her seat, and stared pensively at the box. She couldn't do this. It wasn't going to help. It was just going to make everything worse.

Killian glanced from her to the box and back again, watching her internal war play out on her face. Then, her amazing pirate reached into the back seat, flipped the lid off the box, and dug out one of the four-by-sixes. "Start slowly," he instructed, his tone gentle. "Show them this first. If it goes well, let them know that you have more."

A soft smile tugged at the corners of Emma's mouth as she tucked the picture in her back pocket. "Yeah, all right. Thanks."

He smiled in return. "Don't mention it."

As one, they climbed out of the car and headed into the building.

The home-y aroma of simmering tomato sauce invaded Emma's nostrils halfway up the second flight of stairs. Her stomach growled in response. If dinner tasted even halfway as good as it smelled, she might have to invite herself over tomorrow for leftovers.

She gave the door a cursory rap to announce their presence before pushing it open. "It smells even better in the apartment than it does in the hallway," she said by way of a greeting.

Snow and David both chuckled and made their way over to the door from the kitchen to greet the new arrivals. Henry, who'd arrived a few minutes earlier from an afternoon at the stables with Regina, waved enthusiastically from his seat on the living room floor playing with baby Neal.

After the adults exchanged pleasantries and hugs, all four of them headed over to the kitchen. Emma and Killian grabbed seats at the island while Snow and David reclaimed their places at the stove and counter. Their arrival had interrupted Snow in the middle of breading the chicken for her (ridiculously good) baked chicken parm.

David had been put in charge of the pasta and apparently he'd decided that boxed spaghetti simply wouldn't do tonight. He'd already run most of the homemade dough through the cutting rollers on the old-school pasta press. He cut the final two sheets, set the pasta aside, and started the cleaning process.

(Homemade pasta was delicious but making it resulted in quite the mess.)

They engaged in small talk while David swept the last of the spilled flour into the dustpan and Snow slid the chicken into the oven to bake. Killian glanced over at Emma then, silently asking if she wanted him to occupy Henry and the squirt so she could talk to her parents.

Her heart once again pounded in her chest. Did she really want to do this?

A little inner voice – the lost little girl inside her – whispered, _Yes_.

Emma took a deep breath in and held it while giving Killian a small nod. He smiled and gripped her shoulder for a fleeting moment before turning in his seat. "Henry, wasn't there a game on your talking phone that you wanted to show me?"

Henry frowned in Killian's direction for the briefest of moments but soon seemed to realize that the pirate was trying to give Emma and her parents some privacy. Though he didn't have the slightest idea what the exact plan was, the kid, bless his heart, rolled with the punches. "Oh, yeah! My phone's upstairs. Come with me and I'll show you."

All right, so it wasn't the best acting job in the world and it was even more suspicious when Henry lifted a babbling Neal into his arms. Still, up the stairs the three of them went, leaving Emma lovingly shaking her head and Snow and David vaguely perplexed.

 _We really need to work on their subtlety_ , Emma thought.

Parents and grown daughter stared at each other for a beat. "We don't need to stay here while the chicken bakes," Snow spoke up eventually. "The couch will be more comfortable."

Emma followed her parents to the living room. Snow and David eased down on the sofa but an overly nervous Emma couldn't seem to make herself sit. "Mom? Dad? I, um, have something to show you."

They looked at each other and then up at her, identical expressions of concern on their faces. Her nervousness was clearly making them agitated as well. "What is it, baby?" Snow asked.

Words had never been Emma's thing so she simply pulled the picture from her back pocket and handed it to Snow. Killian had just so happened to grab the one of her and Christine. Emma was glad; it was the only picture she had of her little kid self simply being a goofy little kid.

Snow gasped. The little girl with the open-mouthed, mischievous grin full of missing baby teeth and new adult teeth in the picture was her Emma!

When David leaned closer to look over his wife's shoulder, he drew in a heavy breath as well. They stared, mesmerized, at the photo for a long beat before looking up at their grown baby girl, eyes glistening. "Emma," he breathed, "this is you, isn't it?"

"Yeah," she answered, swallowing hard when Snow ran the tip of her index finger down her daughter's little photographed face. "The girl with me is named Christine."

"Were you and Christine friendly?" Snow asked, her voice low in wonder. "I mean, you must have been to take a picture like this with her."

Emma sank down on the coffee table. Her nervous energy gone, now she needed to sit. "We were. She protected me from the bigger kids, played with my hair, painted my nails, that kind of thing. I could never keep anything but a ponytail in and I always chipped the nail polish but ..."

Snow looked up at her knowingly. "That wasn't the point, was it?"

Emma shook her head, once again swallowing hard. It hadn't been the point. The togetherness had been the point.

David smiled first at his little baby girl in the picture and then at his grown-up baby girl in front of him. "How old are you here?"

"I'd just turned nine." Her age was emblazoned in her memory mostly because Christine was placed out of that house just after Christmas that year. A devastated Emma was moved herself not long after.

A comfortable silence fell over the room as her mom and dad took in absolutely everything about their baby girl. Emma watched their faces carefully, searching for signs that sharing the picture was a mistake.

She saw nothing of the sort. In fact, she saw the exact opposite. Her parents utterly adored the chance to see their baby. It hurt, yes, but even a glimpse of their little girl was a gift unto itself.

"I, um, have more stuff in the car," Emma spoke up, "if you're interested."

Both of them looked up at her, sheer wonder in their eyes. "Of course we're interested, kiddo," David said, his voice catching on his last word.

Emma nodded and pushed herself to her feet to retrieve the box. She was about ten steps from the door when Henry pushed it in and entered the apartment, the bankers box in his hands.

The hell? She hadn't even heard him leave!

"Killian told me what you're doing," he whispered to a stunned Emma as he handed the box to her. "I wanted to help so he said he'd watch Neal while I snuck out to bring this up for you. I'm glad you're showing them this stuff, Mom."

Emma pulled her awesome kid into a hug. "Thanks, kid."

"You're welcome." After a beat, his proud smile shifted into a smirk. "Now go. Gramma and Grampa are chomping at the bit."

That got her to snicker. "Someone's been spending a little too much time at the stables."

He lovingly rolled his eyes at her before heading back up the stairs. Emma took a moment to muster her courage then carried the box to the living room – and by extension her parents. She set it down on the coffee table, took a deep breath, and removed the lid. "Have at it."

As one, mother and father leaned forward and peeked into the box that held their little girl's past. A simultaneous gasp escaped their lips. Staring up at them was a soft white baby blanket trimmed with deep purple ribbon. Snow reached in and picked up the blanket, holding it gingerly, as if it were long lost treasure.

Tears immediately leaped into David's eyes as he lay a gentle hand on the blanket. "The last time I saw this was when I placed you in the wardrobe."

Aw, dammit, now there were tears pricking at Emma's eyes, too.

Snow held the blanket another moment, warring memories evident on her features. "I remember Doc handing you to me after you were born, wrapped in this blanket. I remember it taking Granny forever to knit because she wanted it to be absolutely perfect."

"It is," Emma said softly. "You have no idea how much this blanket comforted me when I was little."

With a tender, knowing glance at her husband, Snow shifted the blanket into David's lap. Then she reached into the box for the next piece of her baby's past.

She pulled out the file containing Emma's research, causing Emma to wince mostly because she just now remembered the newspaper headlines calling Snow and David deadbeat parents. They _weren't_ deadbeat parents. They wouldn't have left her if they didn't have to. They would have come for her if they could.

But Snow's attention was not at all on the headlines or even Emma's handwritten notes as she tried to piece together her own story. No, what had captured her undivided attention was the picture of a little girl, her blonde hair in braids and her eyes full of sadness. "Oh, baby," she murmured, once again touching the picture as if trying to caress her cheek through it.

One by one, Snow and David went through the papers, pictures, and trinkets in the box. Sometimes they looked at an item or piece of paper and simply absorbed it. Sometimes they asked questions. Who was with her in this picture? Was that story a school assignment or something she wrote on her own? What was the significance behind this little plastic mood ring?

Emma answered all of their questions as gently as she could.

She did falter a little when David pulled out the picture of her and Matthew. At first, he'd only had eyes for his little girl. Then, as Snow peeked over his shoulder to see what had captured his attention, he looked up at Emma and asked what she'd been afraid he'd ask: "Who's the little boy with you?"

Talking about Matthew was hard but then again so was this entire exercise. Emma swallowed the lump in her throat before telling the story she'd hoped she won't have to tell. "His name is Matthew. He was one of the first friends I made in the system. I'd just come from a bad foster home and I was scared that this one was going to be the same. When it was lights out my first night there, I started to cry. Matthew tiptoed into my room, knelt down beside my bed, and said, 'Don't cry, Emma.' I asked him why; in some houses, crying led to … bad things but he just said that seeing someone cry made him sad. Then he said I didn't have to cry because he was going to be my friend and I wouldn't have to be alone or scared anymore."

Now both of her parents were giving her watery smiles. "He seems like he was a good friend to you," Snow murmured gently.

"He was," Emma agreed, "but he's also part of the reason I stopped trying to make friends. It was nothing he did. It's just the system. The two of us were inseparable for a little while but then he got placed. I was happy that he'd found a family, of course, but I did not deal well at all with him being gone. I started acting out because in my little six-year-old brain, I thought I'd get moved back with Matthew. All that ended up happening was that I got moved somewhere else."

"And you never saw Matthew again," David finished for her.

"No, I never did, and that was when I realized that all these kids were only ever going to be temporary fixtures in my life."

Her voice caught, causing Snow to grasp her hand. "I'm glad you had his friendship for even a little bit."

"I am, too," Emma murmured.

After waiting a beat to let the emotions settle, Snow and David pulled the next items from the box. They'd finally come to the few school pictures Emma had managed to keep. Tender smiles pulled at their lips as they flipped from one picture to the next, watching their little girl grow up before their eyes.

"I think this one's my favorite," David said softly, handing the picture to Snow.

"It's my favorite, too," Snow agreed.

Emma leaned forward to see which picture they were holding. "That was second grade," she informed them just as softly. She remembered that day; one of the older kids had pushed her off a swing at morning recess and an upset Emma had not at all been interested in lining up for pictures afterward. She'd remained sullen when the photographer told her to say cheese so he ended up telling her what became her favorite knock-knock joke. When the "interrupting cow" moo-ed before she could finish saying, "Interrupting cow who?" she'd cracked up and the photographer had snapped the picture. He'd caught her in the laugh, making it one of the few posed photographs she'd taken with a genuine smile.

By the time they'd emptied the box, all three of them were crying tears of injustice and pain but also tears of comfort and healing. "Thank you for showing us all of this, Emma," David said as he dried her cheeks with his thumbs. "This is more than we could have ever hoped for. I adored getting the chance to get to know you."

"You're welcome," Emma said almost shyly. Apparently giving them the chance to get to know her had been the exact right thing to do.

She helped them tuck all the various papers and pictures back into the box. A teary Snow hung onto the second-grade school picture. She looked down at it again, her index finger finding its way to her little girl's photographed cheek. "Emma? May we keep this?"

Emma's heart skipped a beat. They _wanted_ it. They wanted to _keep_ it. "I'd love for you to have it," she said around the sudden lump in her throat.

A grateful Snow glanced over at David. They conducted one of their famous silent conversations, one which Emma couldn't even begin to interpret. When Snow looked back at Emma, she was smiling. "Thank you, baby. I think it'll look absolutely lovely on the wall next to the picture of your brother."

That did it. Emma's tears spilled over again and both Snow and David shifted from the couch to the coffee table, one on either side of their baby girl. As one, they wrapped her in a tight, comforting hug.

Emma threw her arms around her parents, the lost little girl inside her completely in control now. This … this was everything that lost little girl had ever wanted. "I love you," she whispered to her parents.

"We love you, too," they whispered back in unison. Snow kissed one side of her head and then David kissed the other.

And somewhere inside her, the lost little girl leaped for joy. It may have taken twenty-eight years and then some but Emma Swan had finally found her forever home.


End file.
